While sitting here and writing this review, I'm having a hard time articulating why I enjoyed playing through this game eventhough most of its components fell short for me.

The combat is serviceable, if somewhat messy at times due to the amount of spells you unlock and the few buttons you have available to map them on to and opponents frequently ambush you from off-camera.

The open world activities sprinkled in through the map, of which there are entirely too many, are mostly uninteresting. Overall, I think my main gripe against this game is that there is too much fluff. The main story is enjoyable enough, as are the relationship quests you take on to get to know your fellow students better. But there is so much meaningless filler that I decided pretty early on to ignore most of it, and the experience got a whole lot better after that.

Although it seems like my opinions on this game are pretty sour, I did enjoy the parts that were good about it. It just felt like it had a little too much filler tacked on.